‘Relocation’ by Denyse Woods

7th January 2023

Dear friends, colleagues, lovers,

Yes, it’s me, coming to you in my own words. My last words, as it happens, the last of millions, given my output. One should write one’s own eulogy if circumstance allows, don’t you think? In my case, circumstance has allowed, albeit by a whisker.

Thank you for travelling to this weeny-teeny church, so small that most of you are standing outside, and thanks especially to Yseult for persuading Father Boris to allow us the use of his church by assuring him that I was a person of great faith – which I was, although not the same faith that has held this chapel up for centuries. Still, it had to be here, this shindig, in this mini-monastery on a promontory that stretches into a glassy lake which, on still days, reflects the surrounding hills to the point of double-vision.

You know what they say: “Location, location, location.”

Fr Boris has no doubt offered comforting reassurances that I am still with you in spirit, since I have merely moved to another sphere (the Greatest Location of All, they say). To be fair, you might sometimes sense – as you sit at your desk, or wait for a train, or leap between waves in the sea – that I have suddenly swung past, unseen, with a ghostly tap on your shoulder to reassure you that I haven’t left you. To that I say: Balderdash.

I have left you. We begin, we end, and endings have always been my thing. Critics squabbled over my controversial endings, but they can’t argue with this one. I am gone-gone. End of. Over. I was always an In & Out kind of gal, and I have not moved on to a better place – that is what I did in life.

So don’t seek me out in wishy-washy maybes. Instead, return. Go back to those places we went together, in person, in letters, in paragraphs on pages. Reconfigure me in ports and harbours – like Kuching, the city of cats, where I gazed across the Sarawak at low-roofed multi-coloured houses hiding behind palm fronds, as the long-boat taxis, riding strong currents, fought their way from one bank to the other. Read again about mini-me, aged four, in our fisherman’s cottage in Blankenese, where I gazed down at ships and sailboats bobbing on the Elbe, before we moved, and moved again. Imagine me falling about a cabin perched above a thousand containers in a mid-Atlantic storm, where I learnt that tankers ride rogue waves like wild horses. Glance over my shoulder as I sit beneath the dragon blood tree in Socotra, my own earthly Paradise. Visit me, above all, in those places where I loved and was loved, and see how love holds fast.

In short, since I lived a life of relocation, imagine me there where I am no longer.

Now, go dance by the monks’ cells, all stone and air, here at Gougane Barra, where bits of me will soon hit the crystalline waters and fly amongst the golden hills.

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